Review: Becoming God’s Family

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Cover image of "Becoming God's Family" by Carmen Joy Imes

Becoming God’s Family

Becoming God’s Family, Carmen Joy Imes, IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514010327) 2025.

Summary: A biblical theology of the church for the disillusioned, addressing faults and casting vision for its importance.

This book had its beginning around a campfire with extended family. One member “expressed that he believed in Jesus but saw no use for the church.” Imes concluded, “Someone needed to make a case for it.” This book is that case. Imes recognizes that many have good reason to be disillusioned with the church. For example, she cites toxic leadership, abuse scandals, financial mismanagement, and divisive politics. But she also shows in this book how the church has, even from Old Testament times, been integral to God’s purposes. She draws arcs from the biblical stories to many contemporary abuses. But she also casts a vision for what it means for us to be the church and how we may become what we are within God’s purposes.

Beginning with Abraham, Imes traces the unfolding story of this family God forms at its best and worst. We see the harm Abraham and Sarah do in exploiting Hagar, and how, just as God saw Hagar’s suffering, he sees that of the abused. Imes describes Israel at her best, and her sad and sordid decline under the judges where they neglect even basic hospitality. Then amid the kingships of David and Solomon, Imes focuses on Rizpah. Specifically, she shows the importance of setting broken commitments right.

Following this, she addresses the divided kingdom and how false worship leads to self-destruction. Yet there are also instances of renewed attention to God’s Word. When nationhood is destroyed by exile, God sustains a community to remain and return. But the prophets recall Israel to a more expansive vision to bless the nations and become a multiethnic family. Yet the returned exiles do not fully realize that vision.

However, the coming of Jesus realizes the wider multiethnic community embedded in his human genealogy from Samaritan women to the nations of Pentecost to the Roman empire. Paul’s ministry models crossing ethnic boundaries and forming multiethnic communities that are one body. The book concludes with the vision of the church as the new temple, the place where God dwells and shows himself to the world.

Throughout this narrative, Imes offers both sparkling biblical insights and telling applications, mixed with her personal story. For example, she shows how Israel, from its beginnings was a multi-ethnic family of Egyptians, Canaanites, Mesopotamians, Midianites, and Moabites. Turning to the New Testament, she offers the idea that “all Israel” in Romans 9-11 breaks with Paul’s usage of “the Jews” in the rest of the book, and that “Israel” was dispersed among the nations in 721 BC. Rather, the restoration of “all Israel” finds fulfillment through believing Gentiles from those nations incorporated into one body with Jewish believers.

Imes also addresses contemporary concerns ranging from church abuse to Christian nationalism. She writes with conviction about the place of children in the church. Then she also discusses when it is right to leave a church. More positively, she paints a vision of an inclusive community of generosity and justice, where we experience belovedness and belonging.

While there is so much good material in this book the interleaving of biblical exegesis, contextual sidebars, applicative asides, and personal narrative sometimes results in a disjointed narrative within the chapters. Also, the final chapter theme of the new temple seemed to sparingly deal with the New Testament material. So much more could have been done, it seems with portraying the glory of God in and through his people. Instead, the concluding question is, “Where and with whom do you plan to worship this week?”

That said, there is so much that is helpful beginning with tracing the story of the church not merely to Pentecost but to Abraham. In addition to bibliography, the book includes QR codes linked to BibleProject for each chapter. Finally, Imes makes a compelling case for investing in the church, related to the purposes and working of God.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Other reviews of Carmen Joy Imes books in this series:

Bearing God’s Name: https://bobonbooks.com/2023/06/09/review-bearing-gods-name/

Being God’s Image: https://bobonbooks.com/2023/06/16/review-being-gods-image/

Review: The Gospel of Being Human

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Cover image of "The Gospel of Being Human" by Marty Solomon with Reed Dent

The Gospel of Being Human

The Gospel of Being Human, Marty Solomon with Reed Dent. NavPress (ISBN: 9781641589482) 2026.

Summary: A reframing of the gospel beginning with the good news of our humanity and an invitation to curiosity and wonder.

We often are taught that the gospel is bad news before it is good news. This book challenges this idea with the contention that before all else, our humanity is good news. God’s story in scripture begins with making us in his image. Thus we are fearfully and wonderfully made. We were created with purpose and we were deeply loved from the beginning. This book also is an invitation to be curious, to wonder, and to question how we’ve understood the story. In the end, it is a better story than many of us have been led to believe.

Marty Solomon and Harry Dent invite us over the twelve chapters of this book to explore how we think not only of our humanity but of God. Whereas we divide the world into “us” and “them,” the story of the Garden is that there is only “us,” beloved and broken rebels. We are kindred with all humanity. While it is true that of ourselves, we are incapable of pleasing God, this is not an invitation to passivity. Rather, through God’s redemptive purpose, God calls us to partner with his work in the world. But we often believe God has to punish sin before he loves us. Or he only loves us because of Jesus’ intervention. The authors observe that there is a 1000:3 ratio between God’s love and God’s wrath in scripture and God is utterly free to love us.

With this, the authors turn to our conceptions of God. God is not on the side of some people and against others. As we see in the story of Jonah, God is even for the bad guys, who are not irredeemable. God’s broken world is not beyond repair and so we are called to build lives and communities to reflect his love. And what we build will matter, and so we work with hope. But God will not win by sheer force (nor should we try) but through a “left-handed” power of humility, compassion and presence. So, our lives aren’t measured by success but faithfulness, of living connected to God.

Chapter Ten helped make clear my sense of unease with this quite engaging book. It focuses on “The Romans Road” presentation of the gospel as a formulaic solution to our sin problem. Admittedly, we can reduce the wonders of the gospel to a formula. But I felt the authors both set up a straw man that was unlike anything I’ve been taught and seemed to minimize the cross. They insist “the cross is about more than just the propitiation for our sin” but do not specify what that “more” is. It may be about more but it is not about less! And what I find the authors doing is shifting focus from the cross to “God’s love” that seems to be accessible apart from the cross.

What is hard is that the authors are spot on in focusing on God’s relentless love. But we should not shrink from the cross, uneasy with the violent death of the Son. Rather, we ought to see it as loving act of the Triune God, so identifying with humanity as to die unjustly for our sin. In so doing, God shows us our great worth and his undying love.

I raise this because there is so much good here. The focus on us as image-bearers and partners of God. That God has no “Us-Them.” The gospel as an invitation to partner in the reclamation of a very good world and about life here and now and not just after we die. I can see how the book might be helpful for those struggling with self-image or questions about faith. The first chapter on curiosity is a wonderful guide for those deconstructing (and hopefully reconstructing) faith. But I am uncomfortable about the book’s downplaying the cross. Here, too, the authors react to caricatures. Rather than re-frame with a rich theology of the cross, they shift to a God who loves and forgives freely without constraint. The implication is that Jesus didn’t need to die. I cannot commend that as gospel.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

The Weekly Wrap: August 16-22

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The Weekly Wrap: August 16-22

Amazon and AI

This week 404 Media reported tracing a shipment of old and rare books to an Amazon facility where they were scanned to train AI and then pulped. This follows a trend of booksellers receiving large orders for old and rare books for AI training purposes, a trend many are resisting.

What disturbed me is that this was another instance of Amazon aggressively advancing AI in the publishing industry. It is already the leading source of AI-generated works, allowing those creating these works to bypass conventional publishing while creating works imitative of human authors, often derived from their works.

Basically, Amazon is public enemy number one of human authors.

I have argued previously that AI-generated works ought have no place in the world of publishing. I’ll leave it to others to argue this case elsewhere. It is robbing authors of intellectual property. It tilts the playing field when works that take a week to generate compete with works taking months or years to write. Then, it also cast aspersions on all authors, especially debut writers. It displaces market share from human authors. If allowed into bookstores, it will also displace shelf space. And now, they are destroying old books.

The only way to deal with this is the marketplace. But this means supporting human authors through other vendors, since Amazon is also a huge revenue source for authors and publishers. Otherwise, Amazon will keep blithely going its way. And it is likely that the pollution of AI-generated works will spread. And I believe we will all be the poorer.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Related to my comments above, Jennifer Szalai reviews Jill Lepore’s new The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State in “A Government for the People, but Not by People.” She explores what happens when a liberal democracy is replaced by automation and machines.

Artificial intelligence offers the prospect of instant knowledge. In “Artificial Intelligence: Ars Notoria and the Promise of Instant Knowledge” Ann Lawrence-Mathers explores an ancient magical manuscript promising instant knowledge. It was not a good thing.

Authoritarian movements proclaim the weaknesses of classic liberalism. However, “The Unexpected Persistence of John Rawls” argues for the importance of Rawls’ works for articulating strengths of the liberal tradition.

Many commentators have noted that boys and young men are in trouble in our society. Joseph E. Davis, in “Nowhere Boys,” explores the underlying reasons for this crisis. This summarizes his argument:

“The boy crisis, therefore, is not a crisis of boys, but of the absence that is at the heart of our culture of autonomy. Parents and schools offer boys a language of limitlessness and push them along a trajectory of achievement in which many can find no resonance or inspiration, no stable and meaningful goals to guide and motivate their action. Being “all you can be” rings hollow when it is unclear what is important or necessary for you to actually be.”

In terms of the tilt of the earth, we have one more month of summer in the northern hemisphere. “Six Books You’ll Want to Read Outdoors” reminds us of the unique delights of outdoor reading, at least when it isn’t oppressively hot, stormy, or rainy.

Quote of the Week

Crime writer Megan Abbott was born August 21, 1971. Whether or not we are into crime fiction, many of us have at least one thing in common with her:


“I come from a family of readers. Our house smelled of book.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Abbott’s quote suggests why so many of us like bookstores, especially second hand bookstores. They smell like home.

PBS will be running a documentary on the life of poet Mary Oliver on Tuesday August 25, 9 pm ET. From responses to posting this on social media, there are a lot of Mary Oliver lovers out there. I’m among them. I also share something in common with Mary Oliver. She was born in and grew up in Maple Heights, Ohio. I lived there from 1981 to 1990. However, we never crossed paths.

I’m reading two delightful memoirs, worlds apart in many ways. One is by Muriel Elmer, describing her child as a missionary kid including the loss of her father, boarding school nightmares, and a wondrous display of fireflies one night. The other is from fellow Youngstowner John DeMain, who recently stepped down as director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. He recounts his heroes from summer stock entrepreneur John Kenley to Leonard Bernstein, as well as the staging of a full length Porgy and Bess, which won a Grammy award in 1975. Look for reviews soon.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Marty Solomon with Reed Dent, The Gospel of Being Human

Tuesday: Carmen Joy Imes, Becoming God’s Family

Wednesday: A.J. Jacobs, The Know-It-All

Thursday: John L. DeMain, Working With My Heroes

Friday: Jeffrey A. Lockwood, The Good Quit

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for August 16-22.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

Review: Mule Boy

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Cover image of "Mule Boy" by Andrew Krivak

Mule Boy

Mule Boy, Andrew Krivak. Bellevue Literary Press. (ISBN: 9781954276468) 2026.

Summary: New Years Day 1929 changed Ondro Prach’s life. His first day as mule boy was also the day he alone survived a mine collapse.

His mother tried to avoid sending Ondro to the mines. But finally, when the mine foreman came by to offer him the beginning job of nipper, she relented. Ondro’s father had died in the mines. Ondro worked hard and soon became a spragger. Then, he was offered the job of mule boy, leading the mule that pulled cars in and out of the mine. He was assigned Wicked, who lived up to his name. But he fed him carrots and spoke softly to him in Slovak, and Wicked gave him no trouble.

His first day as mule boy was New Year’s Day. He worked with the miners John Chibala and Stefan Bozak, and their butties Emil and Matty. The whole team worked rapidly to clear the room of coal, to finish early. But just as they were loading the last bit, the mine collapsed, save for a space around a supporting beam. All but Ondro were badly injured, including Wicked who was killed in the collapsed entrance to the room.

Emil and Matty die first. Stefan and John live longer, sharing the light of carbide lamps to help Ondro dig a way out. On breaks, as their lives wane, they talk about their love of life and what it is to meet death. Ondro wonders if this dark place will be his tomb and how he will meet death. With John’s dying breath, after he has spoken of missing his daughter Magda, he points out the way for Ondro to escape, and Ondro does, but too late for the others he leaves behind.

Ondro and his mother move away but life is hard. Others mock him as “the mule boy” and he gets in fights, including one where he badly injured the other boy. So he vows never again to use violence. He works in a brewery, frequently drunk. But he begins a relationship with Magda Chibala, John’s daughter. They marry, but his drinking creates tension between them. Then the draft comes and when he reports, he refuses induction because of his vow. He spends most of the war in prison. Magda requests an annulment and marries another man.

But prison saves him. He stops drinking and meets Jacobson. Jacobson is a Jew and teaches him enough Hebrew to read the book of Jonah, which he will read each sabbath for the rest of his life. And he teaches him the philosophy of Parmenides. And then he is released to serve out the war at a fire lookout and forest ranger in New England, settling there alone and staying on until he retires. Then the visits begin from the families of the miners, wanting to know of their loved ones’ last moments and final words. And through these visits, the full story of the cave-in and escape emerges. Finally, Magda comes. And he shares things about her father never spoken in their brief marriage. But what of them?

Jonah seems particularly significant to understanding this story. Ondro spends days in the belly of the earth; Jonah in the belly of the fish. Both were dark places, death places. The great fish vomits up Jonah. Ondro crawls through the rotting carcass of Wicked. They both live, but never the same. And they both carry “words” for others.

The story is one continuous sentence, reflecting the unfolding memories of Ondro looking back. I have to admit finding it hard to find stopping places, but the continuous narrative makes sense of the flow of his life, interwoven with memories of the fateful events of the mine. It’s a compelling story of meeting death and making meaning of life, often with much faltering along the way and with the help of others. I found it an exquisite story, one in which every word does its work, with nothing extraneous.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Fall and Redemption of Conscience

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Cover image of "The Fall and Redemption of Conscience" by Andrea Ferrari

The Fall and Redemption of Conscience

The Fall and Redemption of Conscience (Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology), Andrea Ferrari, foreword by Paul T. Nimmo. Lexham Academic (ISBN: 9781683598725) 2026.

Summary: A study of conscience in relation to the Triune God as created, fallen, redeemed, and perfected.

Andrea Ferrari argues that at one time conscience was an important theological topic. He cites John Calvin who wrote: “The theologian’s task is not to divert the ears with chatter, but to strengthen consciences by teaching things true, sure, and profitable.” However, he argues conscience has suffered neglect in contemporary Christian thought. Thus, this book is an effort to recover a robust Christian theology of conscience. Ferrari sets out to provide an account that is biblical, theological, trinitarian, and covenantal. It follows a stream of influences in the Reformed tradition from John Calvin, Herman Bavinck, Michael Horton and Simeon Zahl. Ferrari was especially influenced by an essay by the late John Webster, seeing himself fleshing out Webster’s “skeleton.”

Ferrari distinguishes his work in several ways. Firstly, he offers a comprehensive account of conscience based on the whole of scripture. Secondly, he offers a specific analysis of the Old Testament. Thirdly, he explores conscience within the doctrine of creation, showing conscience existed prior to the fall, deriving from inner life of the Triune God. Finally, his study focuses on a reorientation of conscience away from self and toward God.

The plan of the book follows a classic Reformed structure of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. What distinguished the book for me is how Ferrari elaborated that structure. He begins in the first three chapters to consider conscience in light of creation. He looks at conscience first in prelapsarian terms, reflecting something of the inner life of the Trinity and key to humans’ covenantal relationship with God.

Then Ferrari considers, in chapters four and five, the fall, condemnation and corruption of conscience as it relates to other human capacities. He builds on Calvin’s idea of sensus divinitatis, of conscience as a nonphysical perceptual awareness of God. He then considers how the fall corrupts the integrity, innocence, capacity for true self-knowledge and self-scrutiny of the conscience.

The third section, chapters six through nine, addresses the redeemed conscience. Ferrari’s focus is on the renewal of conscience as a manifestation of new creation. This involves reversing the noetic effect of sin. Furthermore, this renewal includes the subjective experience of justification in cleansing from guilt and shame, moving the redeemed from a stance of hiding to openness to God.

Finally, as the last chapter in part three, Ferrari describes the perfection of conscience. He elaborates the visio Dei, our heightened awareness and clear perception of God. He likens this to Christ’s human conscience in its perfection. This enables us to enter into the very inner life of the Trinity from which our conscience derived.

As Ferrari notes, I thought this treatment moved us from conscience as an aspect of self-consciousness to recognizing the wonder of conscience as God’s gift, enabling our covenantal relationship of trust and faithfulness. All the more is this so as one weighs the contrast of the fallen and renewed conscience, especially the shift from darkened understanding to increasing clarity of perception, and from hiding from to openness to God. And then there is the hope of the perfected conscience! This is a rich study that recovers the doctrine of conscience as a glorious gift of the Triune God.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: A Wayfarer’s Poems: The Invitation

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Cover image of "A Wayfarer's Invitation: The Invitation" by T.A. Gibson

A Wayfarer’s Poems: The Invitation

A Wayfarer’s Poems: The Invitation, T. A. Gibson. Resource Publications (ISBN: 9798385225644) 2026.

Summary: Poems celebrating wonder in creation, in one another, and in the Waymaker, inviting attention and belief.

This is the second collection of A Wayfarer’s Poems by T.A. Gibson, the first being A Wayfarer’s Poems: The Mirror published in 2024. I note that because, having delighted in the second, I want to go back to the first.

The poems in this collection are divided into two parts. Those in “To Live” celebrate our life embedded in the beauties of creation, marriage, family, and friends, and ultimately our Creator. Then those in “To Listen” center on attending to “The Waymaker” (part of the title of one poem) to see with wisdom, to trust, and to worship.

In the opening poem, “Aubade (Morning Love Song)” the poet observes the beauties of a woodland morning, conscious that we do not possess these as a crown because the Lord “keeps the good ones for himself.” Another poem, “In Texas,” describes beauties different and unique to that setting. The poet describes a “Love of Life” where the boundaries of self dissolve in sleep and he senses himself “a part of a greater Divinity.”

Other poems are very much grounded in life. “Heritage (To the Helms Family)” considers what we pass from one generation to the next. Several of the poems revel in the wonders of marital love, particularly the paired “Love’s Nature” and “Love’s Vows,” that beautifully and sensually portray the wonder of the “one flesh” relationship. Other poems consider how we live toward God as “Sonnet: Let Us Live” invites us to “live like we had eight hours left. A couple of the poems mark the particular rhythms of rest and reflection on Sundays.

The second section, “To Listen” opens with “A Jewel.” The jewel resides in the heart, an “inner reverence that sets me apart from the world’s decrees.” In the end, it is a hope that abides beyond physical death. The poet reflects upon “Grace,” both its incomprehensibility and our inability to “quantify its perfectness.” Then we are reminded that “we don’t own our souls.” In “Plight” we discover that prior to all our listening, “I am God listening.” The poems throughout this section center on the Waymaker’s invitation to hear and see. Lastly, the poet concludes with a blessing: “I have made you in my image and blessed you like this–do not lose your song”

The poems are indeed invitations to experience and celebrate the goodness of creation and of human bonds. They also point us to the Transcendent, to know ourselves within God’s purposes and abiding love. This is a collection I will savor as a wayfarer.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.